Bonnie Prince Charlie: Charles Edward Stuart (Pimlico)

by McLynn, Frank

  An even more pointed snub to France occurred one night when the prince was at supper with the duc de Gèsvres and some of the ministers of state. The English had just landed troops in Brittany for an extended raid. One of the ministers suggested that Louis XV should put the prince in command of the forces sent to expel them. The prince rejected the idea out of hand. On English soil he was prepared to fight those who resisted his claim to the throne but ‘I can never think of fighting Englishmen in any other cause’.78 The issue of how he would behave towards France if he were king of England was then brought up. The prince replied that he saw no necessary incompatibility between the interests of the two countries, but if this proved to be the case, naturally he would put English interests first.

  Such moments were brief interludes only in the round of passion. For a time it seemed to the prince that he had found the meaning in life which had hitherto always eluded him. When Louise announced that she was pregnant, the delighted prince would lay his head down on her belly, listen to the unborn child and even talk to it.79 And still both lovers’ deep physical and emotional satisfaction persisted, even through the usual storms affecting all love affairs. On one occasion the prince had to leave Louise’s bedroom in great haste to avoid being discovered. On another, after a lovers’ quarrel and in a rage, the prince threatened to fire off both his pistols at dead of night in the place Royale.

  None of this was very serious. But in December a more formidable obstacle to the young lovers than Berryer’s police appeared. Louise’s husband Jules returned from the wars. To conceal the truth about the pregnancy, Louise had to allow a brief resumption of conjugal relations. Then the lovers had to decide how to deal with the much deteriorated situation. Louise suggested that it might be better if Charles did not come to her bedroom until half an hour after her husband had settled down for the night in his own apartment. This meant that their tryst could not commence until well after midnight. At that rate the prince would be returning to St Ouen in broad daylight. He solved the problem by moving to a house in the rue du Chemin du Rempart near Porte St Honoré. This was to be his last open abode in Paris.80

  Yet his own psychological problems could not be so easily dealt with. The return of the young husband brought on towering fits of jealousy. This was almost predictable, given the prince’s fragile self-esteem. Once the masking of the pregnancy had been achieved, he made Louise swear to abstain from intercourse with her husband.81 The jealousy extended backwards in time as well. Perhaps Louise was more experienced than Charles thought, perhaps she had had other lovers before him? The prince’s insane possessiveness for another man’s wife can best be gauged from the fact that, despite perennial pleas of poverty to his supporters, he put Mlle Carteret, one of Louise’s confidantes, on a permanent pension in return for her discovering Louise’s true feelings for him.82 He need not have put himself to so much trouble. Mlle Carteret reported that Louise loved only him, that her passion for him was akin to madness, that she lived solely to be in his arms.

  But there was a new serpent in paradise. The Princesse de Guémène, Louise’s mother-in-law, was a dominant matriarch. She now began to complain to Louise and Mlle Carteret of strange noises heard at night.83 Louise grew alarmed. She asked the prince to space his visits out more and to exercise even greater caution lest they be discovered in flagrante and her reputation ruined.

  As Louis XV, James and a host of others could have testified, the one thing the prince would not tolerate was somebody trying to ‘give him laws’. He reacted to Louise’s suggestion with rage. It was a straight choice. She could put her security and reputation first, or she could choose him with all the attendant ‘inconveniences’. Which was it to be?84

  Unfortunately for both of them, as it later turned out, Louise was essentially weak. She had no means of dealing with a dominant will like the prince’s. She threatened not to see him again if he did not behave less recklessly on his nocturnal visits, but spoiled her ultimatum by revealing her true emotions in the last line of the letter.

  The prince knew how to deal with this sort of thing. He called her bluff in spectacular fashion and threatened to cause a public scandal in the Guémène household unless Louise did his bidding in every exact particular. More precisely, he threatened that if he was not allowed to spend the entire night in her bedroom when he felt like it, he would create a scene by skulking all night long in the place Royale below. Cowed and browbeaten, Louise gave in.85

  But now came a dramatic new development. The Princesse de Guémène had just been waiting for her son to go to Marly before confronting her daughter-in-law. For the Princesse de Guémène, it now turned out, had long known about the affair. The reference to strange nocturnal noises had been in the nature of a wink and a nod. She had been hoping that the affair would burn itself out, but every day it seemed to be reviving. Now that her son was out of the house, the time had come for a showdown with Louise.

  On Tuesday 23 January 1748 Louise was expecting her usual midnight visit from the prince. She sat in her room talking to Mlle Carteret about him. Unexpectedly, her father the duc de Bouillon arrived. Downstairs he and la Guémène conferred. At ten o’clock the two of them appeared at her door. Mlle Carteret was asked to leave. Then the princess began her indictment. She had known about the affair with the prince for a long time. The matter was now becoming a public scandal. The liaison must end at once. If Louise promised to write a letter to Charles Edward, ending the affair, all traces of her indiscretion would be covered up.86

  Louise collapsed into hysterical screaming, followed by steady, uncontrollable sobbing. But she was no more a match for the strong-willed Princesse de Guémène than she had been for the prince. She was forced to write a letter to Charles at her father’s dictation, informing him that their sexual relationship had to come to an end. However, to avoid scandal, it was necessary that the prince continue to visit the Guémène residence on a social basis.

  The prince did not at first know the reason for this sudden termination. It was a full five days later before Louise managed to smuggle out a tear-stained letter, explaining the dramatic events of the night of 23 January.87 The letter alone would probably have been enough to awaken his basically chivalrous instincts and enable him to resume the affair, despite the Bouillon/Guémène interdict. But the prince had already received an account of 23 January from Mlle Carteret that effectively destroyed the relationship.

  Puzzled by the startling dénouement to his affair evinced by Louise’s dictated letter, the prince asked Mlle Carteret for an account of all recent events she had witnessed, omitting nothing. It was then that he learned of the highly critical remarks made about him by the duc de Bouillon during the highly emotional confrontation on the night of 23 January. In the hothouse atmosphere of Louise’s bedroom – where all three principals had at one time been in tears together – the duc de Bouillon had denounced the prince as an ingrate and snake-in-the-grass. Bouillon declared that he had always supported the prince through great difficulties and at great personal and political cost. The prince’s return for this, it seemed, was to dishonour his daughter in her own house.88

  This charge upset the prince more than Mlle Carteret could ever have imagined, and, typically, his response was one of hostility to Louise for being weak enough to submit to her father’s authority.89 He failed to reply to her smuggled letter. Louise in desperation deluged him with further missives. Why had he forsaken her? What had happened to their great and undying love? How could the prince be so lacking in compassion? If he cared nothing for her, surely he cared about the fate of their unborn child?90

  No answer came. At great risk, since all her servants were under orders from the Princesse de Guémène, Louise began to write to Daniel O’Brien and others of the prince’s servants. What had happened to the great and loving prince? If love had mysteriously evaporated, was there no pity left? O’Brien brought back fragments of rationalisation from the prince. Louise had been unfaithful to him, she had had other lovers, s
he had shown her letter to third parties. At this, Louise began to hint that she might take her own life and destroy the prince’s unborn child.

  Still Charles did not reply. This was his punishment for the unsupportable accusations meted out to him by her parents. Louise saw just one way out of the impasse. She would have to arrange a meeting with the prince. But the awesome Princesse de Guémène stood like the angel with the fiery sword barring the return to paradise. She managed to block and thwart all Louise’s schemes for arranging a rendezvous.

  The failure of Louise to meet the rendezvous agreed on by secret correspondence simply fuelled the prince’s self-justifications. It proved her essential weakness and timidity. Was she not mistress in her own house? Why did she not slay the dragoness, stand up to the fearsome Princesse de Guémène and tell her straight that she intended to command her own destiny, scandal or no scandal?

  Despite many setbacks, Louise persevered. Her pertinacity was rewarded when she finally met her lover again, for the first time in four months. On 18 May 1748, on the Pont Tournant at midnight, she and the prince again consummated their love in a closed carriage.91

  The encounter left Louise as emotionally frenzied as ever. But the prince was lukewarm. He was the sort of person who, if he could not experience a sensation at the exact time he wanted, quickly convinced himself the desire did not exist. The high tide of his passion had passed, he told her. He loved her still, though not as much as before. And he had someone else.

  We cannot be certain if, following the encounter on the Pont Tournant, there was not more cramped dalliance in closed carriages. It is even possible that Louise finally risked scandal and went openly to the prince’s house. Whatever the case, from the prince’s viewpoint the affair was now clearly on the wane. The events of 23 January had worked their evil too well. There could be no going back. At some stage early that summer the liaison petered out.

  The prince even lost interest in his child. A son was born, christened and duly accepted as a Rohan. At the age of five months, the child died.92 By that time the prince was disporting himself in the fleshpots of Avignon and had forgotten all about him. As for the luckless Louise, she was the originator and recipient of nothing more than dutiful correspondence with the prince (and later king) for the rest of her thirty-three years of life. Crushed by the traumatic experience of love à la folie, followed by callous abandonment by the man of her life, she relapsed stoically into the life of an unambitious aristocratic matron.93 If we wish to believe that she ever saw the prince again, we have to take the unconfirmed word of British sources, who reported a meeting with the prince in 1753 at the monastery of St Anchin near Lille.94

  But it was not yet quite the end of the story. The prince did not bow out of Louise’s life before he had taken his revenge on the Rohans by provoking a social scandal. It will be remembered that the duc de Bouillon and Princesse de Guémène had requested that the prince continue his social calls, so that no malicious tongues would be set wagging. This was precisely what the prince was determined not to do. He had hit on the perfect method of chastising the contumacious Rohan clan. Pointedly, he stayed away from their social gatherings.

  Two of the prince’s most ardent female supporters were Madame de Mézière’s daughters, the Princesse de Ligne and the Princesse de Montauban.95 They made repeated efforts in the early months of 1748 to get the prince to call at the Guémène residence, but in vain. The prince was not content with simple snubbing. He toyed with the Guémènes, promising to attend suppers, then crying off at the last minute through ‘illness’ (at least he had learned something from Earl Marischal!).96 Eventually, even the devoted Princesse de Ligne gave up.97

  The affront to the Rohans’ honour was taken up by the two most formidable matriarchs of the day. First the Princesse de Guémène essayed her mettle. But the prince hated and detested her.98 Her overtures were brutally rebuffed. The sequel to this was a public slanging-match between the two, so fiery and intemperate that the marquis d’Argenson misinterpreted it as a lover’s quarrel.99

  Next the marquise de Mézières tried her hand. She had a much better track record of deference to the prince, but she fared no better. The old intriguer’s hackles rose. Angrily she accused the prince of betraying his old friends: ‘this in good French is called throwing your friends out of the window for amusement.’100 She ended her irate letter by heavily underscoring her letter, ‘Eleanor, Marquise de Mézières’, as if to reassert the injured honour of the Rohans.

  The prince was unconcerned. He was still the social catch in Paris. It was still a seller’s market for the prince’s attentions. The arrogant Rohans could stew in their own juice. That there were plenty of buyers for his presence soon became clear when he moved on to a new mistress and a new social set.

  24

  A New Mistress

  (March–August 1748)

  THE POLITICAL SITUATION in early 1748 could hardly have been less promising for the prince. It was now certain that a general peace would soon bring the War of Austrian Succession to an end. Charles Edward was still locked in stubborn conflict with France. All hope of a descent on England was laid aside. The prince’s best efforts with the comte d’Argenson were devoted to finding lucrative positions for his followers; Lord Ogilvy finally obtained a French regiment.1 But the War Minister’s personal animus towards Lally – after Kelly the Jacobite personally closest to the prince – meant that, though Charles’s personal choice, he was unable to take over Lochiel’s regiment when the gallant Cameron chief died of meningitis later that year.2

  All the senior Jacobite officers of the ’45, except Lord George Murray, were now settled in France with places or pensions.3 Charles Edward himself still officially refused to accept the French pension, but the French had hit on a scheme to force his hand. They refused to pay anything for the relief of the starving Jacobite ‘other ranks’ on the grounds that the monthly sum paid to the prince was ‘global’ and included an element for the subsistence of his needy followers. Henceforth the prince would be paid 11,000 livres a month (8,000 livres for himself and 3,000 for his followers).4 Charles Edward was thus forced into a choice between seeing Highlanders die and accepting the French pension. He found an ingenious compromise. The ministers would pay the pension money to the banker Monmartel, who in turn would pay it to Lally.5 It would then be distributed as needed, but the prince could still maintain the fiction that he had accepted nothing from Louis XV. When James wrote to say how glad he was that his son had finally accepted the French pension, Charles Edward angrily denied that this was the case.6

  The prince continued as uncompromising in all other political areas. He rejected brusquely a proposal to make him the next king of Poland:

  A throne in itself, I assure you, is not the object of my ambition. I see that a private man may be happier than any sovereign, but I think I owe myself to my country. No other throne in the universe but that of Great Britain would engage my desires.7

  It is not surprising, given his inflexible attitude to Louis XV and his ministers, that he should have been drawn into a social circle that was far from uncritical of the Ancien Régime. Anne-Charlotte de Crussol-Florensac, duchesse d’Aiguillon, was the hostess of the most brilliant salon in Paris. Every Saturday she gave a magnificent supper, to which were invited notable foreigners, ministers in office, former ministers, and men of letters. She adopted a deliberate policy of mixing ranks. Among her circle could be found the future Foreign Minister duc de Choiseul, president Hénault, Abbé (later Cardinal) Bernis, Maupertuis the polar explorer, and the philosophes Voltaire and Montesquieu.8

  The duchesse d’Aiguillon lived an eccentric life even by the standards of Ancien Régime France. Now aged forty-eight, she connived at the open affair between her husband and the Princesse de Conti. In effect, the trio lived as a ménage à trois. Someone with such contempt for the proprieties was likely to be attractive to Charles Edward. It was not just in her intelligence and ability to speak four languages that she seeme
d a perfect complement to the prince. Montesquieu said of her that she was the woman in France who lived most fully and intensely in any given period of time, and that she was fonder of her enemies than her friends. Some observers, who had contrasted the prince’s reluctance to criticise Cumberland with his harshness towards Henry, thought they had heard that story somewhere before. And Montesquieu’s damning portrait of the duchess uncannily pre-echoed Louise of Stolberg’s later strictures on Charles Edward: ‘She has intellect, but it is of the poorest kind. She has the pride of a pedant and all the faults of a lackey.’9

  Moreover, some of the duchesse d’Aiguillon’s acidulous comments on the court of Louis XV would have struck a sympathetic chord in Charles Edward: ‘This place [Versailles],’ she once declared, ‘is the vain land of the wind. There blow there waterspouts of ambition, jealousy and pride. Illusions abound there.’10

  Sure enough, the duchesse d’Aiguillon and Charles Edward greatly took to each other at the temperamental level, though there seems never to have been any sexual element in their relationship. The prince became a constant visitor at her Saturday evening soirées.11 She corresponded with him about her growing family of grandchildren.12 He confided to her his hatred of Tencin.13 She replied by identifying his friends and enemies at the French court (the duc de Gesvres, later in the year to play a crucial role in the prince’s life, was placed as one of the former).14 Even after the prince went into exile and began his years as a wanderer, the relationship continued by letter.15 There is a very touching exchange between the two at the time of the duc d’Aiguillon’s death in 1750.16